Buried bombshells, vanishing votes and hidden hearings: The downfall of a Sydney mayor

Five pages into a submission to a NSW parliamentary committee in June, Office of Local Government deputy secretary Brett Whitworth buried a bombshell.

The correspondence alleged that last year, Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig raised the potential preselection of Labor Bayside mayor Bill Saravinovski and the “timing ... and any public knowledge” of a NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) misconduct case against him.

The submission was unorthodox because Whitworth made it as a private citizen. Hoenig’s most senior public servant suggested the local government minister had improperly interfered in a Labor Party matter. Hoenig has denied speaking to Whitworth about Labor preselections, and the Herald does not suggest the allegation is true.

“Was this a message in a bottle?” a committee member asked.

After 40 years as a Labor powerbroker, mayor and councillor, Saravinovski was dumped from Labor’s ticket in August last year for the council elections. The question was why. Besides an NCAT listing for November, there was little information in the public domain, but allegations of misconduct were circling.

As Saravinovski was told by Sussex Street his career on council would end, a series of Machiavellian political machinations leading to the office of NSW Premier Chris Minns was being orchestrated.

Battle of Bayside

Hoenig and Saravinovski each have decades of local Labor politics under their belts in neighbouring councils in Sydney’s south: Hoenig became mayor of Botany in 1981 while Saravinovski, first elected in 1983, had 11 stints as mayor of Rockdale and later the merged Bayside Council. Hoenig moved into state politics in 2012.

One of Hoenig’s state MP neighbours is Lands and Property Minister Steve Kamper, one of Minns’ most trusted allies. Labor sources expect Kamper to resign as the member for Rockdale either ahead of the 2027 election, or soon after.

Kamper’s chief of staff, Bayside councillor Ed McDougall, will almost certainly be his successor, according to multiple sources. In his inaugural speech to parliament a decade ago, Kamper heaped praise on McDougall, who served as his campaign manager.

“Teddy you are a young man well beyond your years. You are the smartest person I know. You display an incredible loyalty and compassion to all those around you, and I am so proud to call you my friend,” he said.

A stint as mayor would not hurt his chances: Some Labor sources said it would boost his profile in the electorate, while others felt it unnecessary given the respect he has from the premier’s office.

But he faced a series of hurdles. The first was a Bayside councillor named Jo Jansyn.

If Saravinovski was out of the picture, Christina Curry, who served as mayor for a year across 2022 and 2023, believed with the support of Jansyn’s vote, she was in line to take the mayoralty, according to Labor sources speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Before her 2021 run for council, Jansyn received a glowing endorsement from Hoenig, saying he personally asked Jansyn to run “for her sins” and she would be a “great councillor”. Jansyn then spent two years working in Hoenig’s electorate office.

On a Saturday in early August last year, Jansyn walked into her delayed Labor preselection expecting Hoenig’s numbers would ensure her bid for a second term, according to Labor Bayside sources. She was wrong. Jansyn lost by a handful of votes to Soraya Kassim, a community worker who ran for the Greens in the state seat of Kogarah 20 years prior.

Jansyn quit Hoenig’s office the following morning.

Last month, Hoenig denied having any involvement in Jansyn’s preselection, telling budget estimates he did not direct a single person on how to vote. “I stayed right out of it,” he said.

In response to questions from the Herald, Hoenig said he was limited in what he could say because of the court proceedings against Saravinovski, but he reiterated his evidence from budget estimates and denied being involved in preselections.

“I have no knowledge, nor any interest, in the proceedings of some upper house committee,” he said.

“As a state MP, I have a longstanding practice of not being involved in any local preselections concerning any of the four councils in my electorate, nothing changed in 2024.”

Labor sources said the end of Jansyn’s career on council wasn’t personal. It was simply politics. She intended to support Christina Curry for the mayoralty, while there was a dispute over the ticket.

A second hurdle

McDougall’s second hurdle was the prospect of other Labor councillors running for mayor. Cherie Burton, one of Minns’ closest advisers, helped clear the path, according to three people briefed on phone calls made at the time.

With Saravinovski out and no clear Labor candidate for mayor, Joe Awada also believed he had the numbers, supported by councillors Curry and Scott Morrissey. But Burton told him he needed to back McDougall.

“There are not many things Cherie’s not involved in. She’s a proxy for Chris in a lot of the local stuff,” a Labor source said.

According to two Labor members who spoke with Awada afterwards, Burton offered him a sweetener: step aside and give McDougall the mayoralty, lifting his profile for a run at Rockdale at the 2027 state election, and he would be frontrunner for the mayoralty for the remaining years.

A spokesman for the premier said: “The involvement in a private capacity of individual staff members in their local Labor area is a matter for them.”

McDougall and Awada did not respond to requests for comment.

At the council meeting of October 9, 2024, McDougall became Bayside’s new mayor.

Saravinovski in the spotlight

There had been “smoke” around Saravinovski for decades, according to one Labor HQ source.

Bayside councillors claimed they had been told by the council’s general manager about the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) probe into Saravinovski and an unsolicited proposal from developer Ali Abrahim (also known as Ali Ibrahim) to build a car park in Brighton-Le-Sands.

Under Operation Aspen, the ICAC’s investigators looked at allegations of impropriety levelled against the mayor in 2022. The watchdog opted against a full public hearing and referred the matter to the Office of Local Government on December 14 that year.

On March 27, 2024, 15 months later, Whitworth referred the ICAC’s evidence – contained in a departmental report – to NCAT, satisfied Saravinovski “engaged in misconduct”. NCAT heard the matter in November 2024.

In confidential evidence to a parliamentary committee, and relayed by multiple sources with knowledge of the hearing, Whitworth alleged Hoenig urged him on five occasions across the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 to accelerate OLG’s submission regarding Saravinovski’s alleged misconduct to NCAT because of the looming Bayside preselection.

Whitworth gave evidence that on the first two occasions, he told Hoenig it was improper for a minister to be involved in a purely party matter. Whitworth alleged that Hoenig persisted, according to sources who heard the deputy secretary’s evidence.

In response to questions from the Herald, Whitworth said: “Given these proceedings were in-camera, I make no comment.”

Hoenig denied at budget estimates having ever discussed Saravinovski’s preselection with his deputy secretary, and repeated the denials when contacted by the Herald. “I have a longstanding practice of not being involved in any local preselections concerning any of the four councils in my electorate, nothing changed in 2024.”

Inside Labor HQ, senior apparatchiks had been grappling with a lack of information, according to one source. The formal endorsement of Bayside candidates was delayed as the Saravinovski matter was considered.

Saravinovski told confidants he received correspondence from the ICAC telling him their investigation was over. After what he believed was a positive meeting with Labor’s candidate review committee, Meredith Burgmann and John Robertson, the mayor thought he would once again be endorsed.

Even though the NCAT matter was not listed until November and could not be reported on, Labor’s candidate review committee concluded it would end his 40 years of public service.

Soon after, McDougall called Saravinovski with bad news: he was off the ticket, according to one source who spoke with the former mayor. A phone call from Kamper followed, according to one source, telling him he would be replaced at the top of the ticket by his 21-year-old son, Chris Saravinovski.

Labor Bayside types were surprised: Chris hardly attended party branch meetings, nor had anything resembling political experience.

The hearings begin

In February, NCAT deputy president Rashelle Seiden, SC, handed down her judgment: the former Bayside mayor had engaged in misconduct on three grounds.

The first found the veteran councillor failed to provide a “full written disclosure” regarding his relationship with Abrahim and the proposal to redevelop a Brighton-Le-Sands car park.

The second and third found Saravinovski had engaged in “intimidatory behaviour” towards council staff, including interrupting a presentation and inadvertently knocking a water bottle off a desk.

Rather than disqualifying him from standing for council, Seiden agreed with both parties’ submissions that a reprimand was appropriate.

The matter appeared resolved. Then, in August, the ICAC revealed that the Director of Public Prosecutions advised there was sufficient evidence to charge Saravinovski with three counts of giving misleading evidence.

Two of the matters involved Saravinovski’s evidence in relation to Abrahim. The first charge alleges Saravinovski told ICAC investigators that he did not have “a personal relationship or dealings” with the property developer as of November 2018. The second is that he believed the “less than significant non-pecuniary interest” he declared in relation to the matter was a full disclosure.

The third alleges Saravinovski claimed he did not provide Abrahim with “access to confidential documents” on January 25, 2022.

There was enough doubt about Saravinovski floating around the public domain to warrant his removal, Labor sources say.

“We’ve been proven correct. On the balance of things, we made the right call,” a Sussex Street source said.

As for Saravinovski, he fronted the local court clad in a charcoal suit last Thursday. Solicitors from the DPP overseeing the case looked on. The 16th-floor courtroom in the John Maddison Tower stands 14 kilometres from the fiefdom where Saravinovski ruled for four decades.

With the matter adjourned until November, Saravinovski’s fall from grace is still incomplete. The bigger story may be what Whitworth and Hoenig are yet to say.

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